Monday, July 31, 2017

Crayons and Baby Wipes

As  I was sweeping my house this morning, I was thinking about how I should really sit down and write.  Then Little L. went and helped herself to a banana, which just melted my heart.  I can hardly believe she is at the age where she can do that….she went, took it off the bunch, peeled it, and is now munching away while humming and dancing through the house.  Oh, and unplugging my laptop.  Par for the course, I guess, as I am focused on writing at the moment!

One of her most recent escapades was writing on the wall.  My own fault, actually.  We have a wall where we record her height over time, and so in her little mind, it’s okay to write on the wall….at least on that part.  Last week, I was washing dishes, and Little L. was playing in the kitchen behind me, as she often does.  She likes taking all the placemats out of the drawer and setting them up like stepping stones throughout the house.  I have yet to figure out what she’s doing.  The only thing i can think of is that she figured out “The Floor is Lava” all on her own….

Anyway, suddenly all was quiet.  And then I heard some scratching noise.  Afraid she had somehow gotten ahold of a knife, I went after her, and found her writing away on the height wall.  It was blue.  It was orange.  It was green.  It was gray.  It was yellow.  And then I noticed another beautiful blank wall (read: canvas) had been decorated with orange.

How could I scold her when I was the one who wrote first on the wall??  That’s when she got her lesson in erasing and scrubbing.  But just water wouldn’t get the crayon off.  That’s when my Mom sent me this link…

The baby wipes worked, but then they also starting taking the paint off.  We did end up getting most of it off, but there is still one decorative orange line on the no-longer-blank canvas!


Enquanto eu estava varrendo a casa essa manhã, eu estava pensando em como eu devia sentar e escrever.  Então Little L. foi e pegou uma banana, sozinha, que me derreteu o coração.  Eu nem acredito que ela já tem idade para fazer isso...ela foi, tirou a banana, descascou-a, e agora está comendo enquanto cantando e dançando pela casa.  E também tirando meu notebook da tomada....  Faz parte, como estou focada aqui em escrever, e não nela!

Uma de suas artes mais recentes foi escrever na parede.  Culpa minha, na verdade.  Nós temos uma parte da parede onde registramos sua altura ao longo do tempo, então na cabecinha dela, pode sim escrever na parede...pelo menos, naquela parte.  Semana passada, eu estava lavando louças e Little L. estava brincando atrás de mim na cozinha, como ela costuma fazer.  Ela gosta de tirar o jogo americano da gaveta e espalhar pela casa, como se fossem pedras para pisar.  Eu ainda não entendi bem o que ela está fazendo.  A única coisa que penso é que ela já descobriu sozinha a brincadeirinha "O Chão é Lava"...

De repente, tudo estava quieto.  E então escutei um barulho de algo arranhando.  Com medo de que ela, de alguma maneira, tivesse pegado uma faca, eu fui atrás dela, e achei-a escrevendo, feliz, na parede da altura.  Estava azul.  Estava laranja.  Estava verde.  Estava cinza.  Estava amarela.  Então eu percebi que mais uma parede branca (leia: tela de pintura) tinha sido decorada de laranja. 

Como eu poderia reclamar com ela, se fui eu que primeiro escrevi na parede?  Foi então que ela teve sua primeira lição em apagar com borracha e esfregar a parede.  Mas água sozinha não tirava a crayon.  E aí minha mãe me mandou esse link...

http://tipnut.com/21-crayon-busters-how-to-remove-crayon-from-walls/

Os lenços umedecidos funcionaram, mas também começaram a tirar a tinta da parede.  Nós acabamos tirando a maioria, mas ainda tem uma linha laranja para enfeitar a "tela de pintura" de Little L.!

How it all began....

I am an American living in Brazil.  I have thought for a while that I should sit down and start a blog…as if I don’t have enough on my plate, with teaching English in all my spare time, teaching at Church every week, and baking American sweets to sell.
No better place to start a “mommy blog” (I’m not a fan of that term, actually), than with the birth of Little L. Just to clarify a few things…my birth experience was NOT a typical Brazilian one; I am not in a third-world country, so many (read:most) people have different experiences than mine!
My mom has 4 kids, and all of her labors were pretty fast.  I think the longest one was 4 and a half hours.  I guess I was trying not to count on following in her footsteps, but at the same time…I really was kind of expecting to.  But then again, a lot of things I expected or didn’t expect were the complete opposite of what really happened.  I had a totally natural birth experience…by accident!!!!
My water broke around 11:30pm.  At the time, my husband and I didn’t have a car, but we lived about 2 blocks from my in-laws, who did have a car…and my father-in-law is a retired cop, so when he needs to drive fast, he sure does!  My mother-in-law is an obstetrics nurse.  Anyway, we had just been at their house, and walked home late.  When we walked in the door, I went straight to the bathroom, and when I felt a TON of liquid, I knew my water had broken.  I called my husband over, and he called his mother.  Meanwhile I thought I should take a shower.  I felt gross.  When you’re in that kind of situation, you don’t really know how to think!
My in-laws came over, and my mother-in-law was appalled that my husband had not passed on the message for me to lie down….I guess he didn’t hear that part in the craziness of thinking about his first child being born soon!
They drove us to the hospital, which was empty, fortunately!  I did not have to wait to be examined.  The doctor told me I was only 2cm dilated, and I’d only have the baby around noon or so.
Meanwhile, I didn’t feel anything.  No cramps, no contractions, nothing.  I felt great!  Around 12:30, I started to feel small cramps.  They got me set up in a bed in the labor room, which was a room with several other women in labor, before moving to the delivery room.  I was fortunate; my mother-in-law could stay with me (my husband could not, though).  They gave me a hospital gown (if you can call it that) and just kind of forgot about me.  I still had 12 hours to go, after all.  I saw my name up on the board with “2cm” written next to it.  This was around 1am.
By this point, I was having contractions.  I remember looking at the clock around 1:30, and counting that my contractions were STRONG, and only 2 minutes apart.  My MIL couldn’t believe it.  And I was sitting there thinking…there is NO WAY this is going on for another 10 hours!  It got to the point after about an hour and a half where I was sure the baby was going to be born basically immediately.  My contractions had maybe 20 seconds between them, and my MIL was saying she’d never seen a labor progress this quickly.  She looked around for a nurse…nowhere to be found.  The doctor was in the delivery room delivering another baby.  I told her “The baby is coming!” And she assured me that it was normal to feel that.  When I insisted the baby was actually coming, she checked and sure enough, Little L. was crowning, around 3:15am.
My MIL was just about to put some gloves on and deliver her granddaughter herself when the nurse appeared, saw the situation, and ran for the doctor.  He got there just in time to catch Little L., at 3:27am.
And what a beautiful moment it was!  Meeting my precious baby for the first time…there are no words to describe it.
I could go on and on with more details, but in the end, having a natural, non-medicated birth was amazing.  I would definitely do it again….especially if all my future births are only 4 hours long!
Stay tuned for more posts about life as a relatively new mommy (Little L. is a year and a half old now), life in Brazil, and other random thoughts from my never-resting brain!